Bullying, says SuEllen Fried, never was and never should have been “just part of growing up.”

Yes, “it’s been going on forever,” she says, but research now shows that one in four children who act as bullies and continue in the behavior commit crimes by the age of 25. Mental health crises among youth are driving a tragic suicide rate. Prisons are full of people who bullied and were bullied.

“And now we’ve added cyberbullying,” she said. “Social media has taken bullying way beyond the worst it’s ever been.”

What the world needs now, she says — and what LINC’s team of after-school programming supervisors and staff are learning — are lessons in empathy.

To do this, LINC has built a curriculum for its staff and the children and families they serve, drawn from the decades of work Fried has devoted to saving children and youth from the pain of bullying.

It’s a perfect match. Fried, as one of LINC’s founding commissioners, knows well how the non-profit can connect with children and parents. And LINC has Fried’s hard-earned expertise close at hand.

“I love that it’s happening,” Fried said of LINC’s new anti-bullying campaign. “LINC has so many programs in so many school districts. They have the affection, appreciation and respect of those districts because of all the ways LINC has been a support. It’s such a natural fit.”

In the spring of 2024 and into the summer, LINC has begun training top staff in its school sites to train the frontline workers in a curriculum that helps them look at their own past and vulnerabilities to help them recognize children who are either being targeted by, or who are exhibiting, bullying behavior.

The core of the program is rising from the multiple books Fried has researched and written, some co-authored with her daughter, Paula Fried.

Originally a dance therapist, Fried had worked in state hospitals and then prisons, expanding her dance therapy into a holistic approach of helping people find a path away from violent tendencies and thoughts. By the early 1990s, she was turning much of her attention to the impact of bullying on children, in school and then as they grew into young adults.

She founded BullySafeUSA in 2002 and has since worked with more than 100,000 students, educators, councilors, administrators and parents across the country.

LINC’s team is drawing on the lessons Fried has learned. Some are foundational, like describing a child as exhibiting bullying behavior or bullying, but never calling a child a “bully.” No labels.

They are learning the basics of “S.C.R.A.P.E.S”:

Self-esteem and skill enrichment; Conflict resolution and mediation skills; Respect for differences; Anger management and assertiveness training; Problem solving skills; Empathy training; and Sexuality awareness training.

But perhaps Fried’s most urgent message is for the LINC team to take the time in the classroom or on the playground and in safe moments with children to ask questions, and listen.

“Keep asking questions,” she said. “The more information kids share, they are delivering the message, which is so much more powerful than coming from the outside and giving them a lecture.”

“The kids have so much information,” she said. “Keep asking them questions and they are going to keep giving us insights. They are going to give us information that we would never get if we don’t take the time to ask them what’s happening in their lives.”

Some of these revelations came to Fried during auditorium events with students. She would involve children more, letting them speak into the microphone. One time, when a girl was tearfully telling her story of being bullied, a boy in the back stood and declared, “I’m sorry I did that to you!”

She brought them together and let him speak into the microphone. The person who had bullied was given space to apologize. The person who had been bullied was invited to accept the apology, or ask for time to be able to accept the apology.

In these and other moments, Fried began to rely more and more on the children and youth themselves to be the teachers. And more and more, she said, “I left knowing change has happened.”

LINC is emphasizing bullying training because it is important to creating a safe and welcoming space that keeps children in school, said LINC Pre-School Coordinator Lauren Walls, who helped build the new training curriculum.

“We want to highlight the severity of bullying because we do deal with it at our Caring Community sites,” Walls said. “Fried calls bullying ‘peer abuse,’ which signifies the severity of the trauma behind it.”

LINC built the curriculum with insight to watch for and understand the impact not only on the child who is bullied, but the child who is bullying and the children who are witnessing it, Walls said.

Fried cites data that has shown that nationwide 160,000 children stay home every day out of fear of being bullied on the school bus, the playground and the classroom.

“We know that when children are not in school, they’re not receiving instruction,” Walls said. “Part of our charge is to make sure we are doing everything we can to make our kiddos feel safe in our programs so they are in school receiving the instruction that they need.”

LINC followed Fried’s model of asking questions by embedding the practice in the design of its training. LINC staff from its school sites are given time in the training to list their thoughts and ideas on bullying with markers on large sheets of paper taped up around the conference room in LINC’s offices.

“You could see the wheels spinning in their heads,” said LINC Caring Communities Coordinator Eric Clayborne, one of the team of trainers. “They were thinking: This is going on at my site or I have been involved in this myself, or I did this to people. It was good to see ideas bounced off.”

In some cases, the trainers and the LINC staff thought about times they were bullied, or experiences they witnessed, or even when they bullied.

The introspection helped the team see the importance of the work, said LINC Caring Communities Coordinator Breona McNeil.

“All students come from different walks of life and we never know what students are experiencing at home that could result in what shows in our program,” McNeil said. “It’s important for us to do this work to bring awareness to staff, students and their families. We are a part of our children’s village and we are raising the future citizens of the world and we want to make sure they are prepared.”

The word that launches it all, Fried said, is empathy.

“Empathy,” Fried tells the youth at her gatherings, “is the capacity every human being has to put themselves in somebody else’s skin and imagine what they’re going through.”

She asks everyone to close their eyes.

“Think of someone in this room who you know is hurting, who’s been bullied, they’ve been tormented,” she says. “And I’m wondering if any of you have a conscience that’s bothering you and you’d like to make an apology.”

Every time the hands go up, she said. And the apologies take place.

It’s an experience of grace she wishes for everyone, children and adults that can save lives.

“We have to stop causing pain for one another,” she said. “We have to.”

By Joe Robertson/LINC Writer